Soviet and Russian Lunar Exploration

consideration even given for a manned mission to lunar orbit to accompany the
sample return mission from the surface? Assuming the same profile as February,
the L-1S would have entered lunar orbit on 7th July, left for Earth on the 9th and been
recovered on the 12th. Virtually all the officials concerned with the space programme
converged on Baikonour for the launch. This was a heroic effort to stay in the moon
race ahead of Apollo 11. One engineer later recounted that the frantic scenes reminded
him of World War II in Stalingrad: 'All that was missing was the German Stuka dive
bombers.'
The second N-1 lifted off very late on the night of 3rd July, at 11: 18 p.m. Moscow
time. Before it even left the ground, a steel diaphragm from a pulse sensor broke,
entered the pump of an engine which went on fire, putting adjacent engines out of
action, burning through the KORD telemetry systems and setting the scene for an
explosion. KORD began to close down the affected engines: 7, 8, 19 and 20. Then an
oxygen line failed, disabling engine #9. The cabling system once again disrupted,
KORD shut the entire system down about 10 sec into the mission (though, for some
reason, one engine continued to operate for as long as 23 sec). The N-1 began to sink
back on the pad. As it did so, the top of the rocket, now 200 m above the pad, came
alight at 14 sec, the escape system whooshing the L-1S cabin free just before the
collapsing N-1 crashed into the base of its stand, utterly destroying the launchpad and
causing devastation throughout the surrounding area. For the thousands of people
watching, there was an air of surreality about it. They saw the rocket topple and fall,
the fireball, the mushroom cloud but they didn't hear a thing. Then they felt the
ground shake, the wind gush over them, the thunderous deafening roar and the metal
rain down on top of them. Although only a few had sheltered in bunkers, none of the
others had been near enough to be injured. The explosion had the force of a small
nuclear explosion, toppling cars over. The physical destruction was enormous, with
windows and doors blown out for miles around and little left of the pad but smouldering,
gnarled girders. Part of the flame trench had even collapsed. Amazingly, the
adjacent pad, with a mock N-1 rocket still installed, had survived. Even more
miraculously, so had most of the crashed N-1's own tower.
The explosion was so powerful that it triggered seismographs all over the world.
Days later, an American satellite flew overhead, snapping the scorch marks and
devastation. When the image was received by an analyst in Washington DC he took
a sharp intake of breath, stood up and yelled at the top of his voice to all his colleagues
to come over and see what he had seen.
Although a preliminary investigation had guessed the cause of the disaster within
a few days, the search for further clues went on for some time and the definitive report
was not released for a year. The gap between this launch and the next one would
inevitably be longer, as facilities must be rebuilt. Again, the failure to go for full
ground-testing had proved expensive.
To Soviet space planners it was clear that the game was nearly up. Foiled by the
Apollo 8 success, frustrated by one Proton and N-1 failure after another, the past two
years had been marked by one misfortune after another. Nothing seemed to go right.
It was a dramatic contrast to the early days when they could do no wrong and the
Americans could do no right. It was the other way round now and Apollo steamed on